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Run Validator

Validator Hardware Requirements​

1. Mainnet​

  • VPS running recent versions of Mac OS X or Linux.
  • IMPORTANT 3T GB of free disk space, solid-state drive(SSD), gp3, 8k IOPS, 250MB/S throughput, read latency <1ms (if start with snap sync, it will need NVMe SSD)
  • 16 cores of CPU and 64 gigabytes of memory (RAM)
  • Suggest m5zn.3xlarge instance type on AWS, or c2-standard-16 on Google cloud.
  • A broadband Internet connection with upload/download speeds of 10 megabyte per second

2. Testnet​

  • CPU: 4core, Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz
  • Memory: 16 GB
  • Disk: ~1.5 TB
  • Network Bandwidth: Upto 25 Gbps
  • EBS Bandwidth: Upto 9.5 Gbps

Setting up Validator Node​

1. Install BSC Fullnode​

Follow the instructions here to set up a full node.

2. Start Validator Node​

There are 2 ways to start the validator node.

  1. Using the command line as below: !!! Warning Please do not expose your RPC endpoints to public network.
## generate the consensus key and input the password
echo {your-password to the mining account} > password.txt
echo {your-password for the bls wallet} > blspassword.txt
geth --config ./config.toml --datadir ./node --syncmode snap -unlock {the address of your mining account} --password password.txt --blspassword blspassword.txt --mine --vote --allow-insecure-unlock --cache 18000

OR

  1. Follow the below steps as an alternative:

  • Step 1. Create a voting key first: ./geth bls account new --datadir <path>

    • It will generate a wallet if it has not been created before, you have to keep the wallet password. If the wallet has been created before, you only need to provide the password.

    • Then it will create an account, you have to keep the account password too, the password length should >=10 characters.

      Note: Remember, you can create several accounts, but only one will be used.

  • Step 2. You can view keys in the wallet by: ./geth bls account list --datadir <path>

    • Remember the first one listed here will be used as the voting key, other keys are not used right now.

  • Step 3. Update the config file: config.toml (Update node and eth.miner section in config.toml file.)

    • add 2 fields under Node section: BLSPasswordFile & BLSWalletDir.

      You need to provide the file: /<path>/bls/blspassword.txt, may generate it by: echo <WalletPassword> >/<path>/bls/blspassword.txt

    • add 1 field in [Eth.Miner] section: VoteEnable = true to enable it. Or you may manually add an option on node start: geth --vote to enable it as well.

  • The content of the config.toml for example:

      ...
      [Node]
      BLSPasswordFile = "/<path>/bls/blspassword.txt"
      BLSWalletDir = "/<path>/bls/wallet"
      ...
      [Eth.Miner]
      VoteEnable = true
      ...

Note: if the node prints: "BLS wallet did not exists.", then you may add the flag to specify it: –blswallet /<path>/bls/wallet

  • Step 4: restart
    • You may only provide the flag: --vote, if you did not specify it in config.toml Then you may go ahead, just restart the node.

For more details, please look into this: https://forum.bnbchain.org/t/bnb-smart-chain-testnet-luban-upgrade-announcement/1331 (section: https://forum.bnbchain.org/t/bnb-smart-chain-testnet-luban-upgrade-announcement/1331#h-22important-for-validator-operator-8)

Post Running​

1. Monitor node status​

To get started quickly, run GethExporter in a Docker container.

docker run -it -d -p 9090:9090 \
  -e "GETH=http://mygethserverhere.com:8545" \
  hunterlong/gethexporter

2. Update validator profile​

You can submit a PullRequest to this repository to update your information: https://github.com/bnb-chain/validator-directory Reference: https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/6976

3. Publish Validator Information​

Please submit a Pull Request to this repo https://github.com/bnb-chain/validator-directory

This repository is a place for validator candidates to give potential delegators a brief introduction about your team and infrastructure, and present your ecosystem contributions.

4. Stop Validating​

You can stop mining new blocks by sending commands in geth console

Connect to your validator node with geth attach ipc:path/to/geth.ipc

miner.stop()

To resume validating,

miner.start()